An official website of the United States government
As artificial intelligence (AI) profoundly reshapes our personal and professional lives, there are growing calls to support pre-college aged youth as they develop capacity to engage critically and productively with AI. While efforts to introduce AI concepts to pre-college aged youth have largely focused on older teens, there is growing recognition of the importance of developing AI literacy among younger children. Today’s youth already encounter and use AI regularly, but they might not yet be aware of its role, limitations, risks, or purpose in a particular encounter, and may not be positioned to question whether it should be doing what it’s doing. In response to this critical moment to develop AI learning experiences that can support children at this age, researchers and learning designers at the University of California’s Lawrence Hall of Science, in collaboration with AI developers at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, have been iteratively developing and studying a series of interactive learning experiences for public science centers and similar out-of-school settings. The project is funded through a grant by the National Science Foundation and the resulting exhibit, The Virtually Human Experience (VHX), represents one of the first interactive museum exhibits in the United States designed explicitly to support young children and their families in developing understanding of AI. The coordinated experiences in VHX include both digital (computer-based) and non-digital (“unplugged”) activities designed to engage children (ages 7-12) and their families in learning about AI. In this paper, we describe emerging insights from a series of case studies that track small groups of museum visitors (e.g. a parent and two children) as they interact with the exhibit. The case studies reveal opportunities and challenges associated with designing AI learning experiences for young children in a free-choice environment like a public science center. In particular, we focus on three themes emerging from our analyses of case data: 1) relationships between design elements and collaborative discourse within intergenerational groups (i.e., families and other adult-child pairings); 2) relationships between design elements and impromptu visitor experimentation within the exhibit space; and 3) challenges in designing activities with a low threshold for initial engagement such that even the youngest visitors can engage meaningfully with the activity. Findings from this study are directly relevant to support researchers and learning designers engaged in rapidly expanding efforts to develop AI learning opportunities for youth, and are likely to be of interest to a broad range of researchers, designers, and practitioners as society encounters this transformative technology and its applications become increasingly integral to how we live and work.
more »
« less
Intelligent science exhibits: Transforming hands-on exhibits into mixed-reality learning experiences
Museum exhibits encourage exploration with physical materials typically with minimal signage or guidance. Ideally children get interactive support as they explore, but it is not always feasible to have knowledgeable staff regularly present. Technology-based interactive support can provide guidance to help learners achieve scientific understanding for how and why things work and engineering skills for designing and constructing useful artifacts and for solving important problems. We have developed an innovative AI-based technology, Intelligent Science Exhibits that provide interactive guidance to visitors of an inquiry-based science exhibit. We used this technology to investigate alternative views of appropriate levels of guidance in exhibits. We contrasted visitor engagement and learning from interaction with an Intelligent Science Exhibit to a matched conventional exhibit. We found evidence that the Intelligent Science Exhibit produces substantially better learning for both scientific and engineering outcomes, equivalent levels of self-reported enjoyment, and higher levels of engagement as measured by the length of time voluntarily spent at the exhibit. These findings show potential for transforming hands-on museum exhibits with intelligent science exhibits and more generally indicate how providing children with feedback on their predictions and scientific explanations enhances their learning and engagement.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10321234
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of the Learning Sciences
- ISSN:
- 1050-8406
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
null (Ed.)Over the last decade, large multitouch displays have become commonplace in museums and other public spaces. While there is preliminary evidence that exhibits based on tangible technologies can be more attractive and engaging for visitors than displays alone, very little empirical research has directly compared tangible to large multitouch displays in museums. In this paper, we present a study comparing the use of a tangible and a multitouch tabletop interface in an exhibit designed to explore musical rhythms. From an observation pool of 791 museum visitors, a total of 227 people in 82 groups interacted with one of the two versions of our exhibit. We share the exhibit design, experimental setup, and methods and measures. Our findings highlight advantages of tangible interaction in terms of attracting and engaging children and families. However, the two exhibits were equally effective at supporting collaborative interaction within visitor groups. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for museum exhibit design vis-à-vis visitor engagement and learning.more » « less
-
Informal science learning sites (ISLS) create opportunities for children to learn about science outside of the classroom. This study analyzed children’s learning behaviors in ISLS using video recordings of family visits to a zoo, children’s museum, or aquarium. Furthermore, parent behaviors, features of the exhibits and the presence of an educator were also examined in relation to children’s behaviors. Participants included 63 children (60.3% female) and 44 parents in 31 family groups. Results showed that parents’ science questions and explanations were positively related to children observing the exhibit. Parents’ science explanations were also negatively related to children’s science explanations. Furthermore, children were more likely to provide science explanations when the exhibit was not interactive. Lastly there were no differences in children’s behaviors based on whether an educator was present at the exhibit. This study provides further evidence that children’s interactions with others and their environment are important for children’s learning behaviors.more » « less
-
Informal science learning spaces such as museums have been exploring the potential of augmented reality (AR) as a means to connect visitors to places, times, or types of content that are otherwise inaccessible. This design-based research engaged the La Brea Tar Pits Museum and university partners in a research practice partnership to enhance place-based science learning through potential AR exhibits. Results from implementation of four design iterations show that AR technology is a promising tool to help learners interact with content that dates back thousands of years and overcome their scientific misconceptions. Furthermore, incorporating AR technology into museum exhibits can update them with 21st learning tools to support visitor enjoyment in science learning.more » « less
-
Research in both laboratory and museum settings suggests that children’s exploration and caregiver–child interaction relate to children’s learning and engagement. Most of this work, however, takes a third-person perspective on children’s exploration of a single activity or exhibit, and does not consider children’s perspectives on their own exploration. In contrast, the current study recruited 6-to 10-year-olds (N = 52) to wear GoPro cameras, which recorded their first-person perspectives as they explored a dinosaur exhibition in a natural history museum. During a 10-min period, children were allowed to interact with 34 different exhibits, their caregivers and families, and museum staff however they wished. Following their exploration, children were asked to reflect on their exploration while watching the video they created and to report on whether they had learned anything. Children were rated as more engaged when they explored collaboratively with their caregivers. Children were more likely to report that they learned something when they were more engaged, and when they spent more time at exhibits that presented information didactically rather than being interactive. These results suggest that static exhibits have an important role to play in fostering learning experiences in museums, potentially because such exhibits allow for more caregiver–child interaction.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2022.2032071
